Blog

I haven't been blogging my current trip to Palestine*, where the Al Kamandjati Camerata has been touring a Baroque programme throughout the country, but my experiences on this winter's journey have been just as fascinating, hopeful, hopeless and colourful as ever.
As well as a full selection of music for strings and solo instruments by Handel, Bach, Boyce, Telemann, Quantz and Fasch , I was also playing part of Vivaldi's Four Seasons, and it was a joy to perform as far afield as Nablus (so much more secure than last year), and Shaf'am, a mainly Arabic town in the north of Israel, as well as the usual haunts: Bethlehem, Ramallah, Jerusalem, and other cities.
Unlike last year, we didn't have permission to enter the Gaza Strip, and unsurprisingly so: the situation there has deteriorated disgracefully at the time of writing, and the end of the latest ceasefire last week has only confirmed the continuation of hostility that never genuinely ceased.
But for all the terrible realities, other things improve relentlessly. It's very moving to come back again to the same place – I have indefinitely committed to returning twice a year for festivals in December and in the summer – and see the young Palestinian musicians so much further advanced in maturity and skill. There is phenomenal promise in these lands, and although the future will never be bright until a lasting peace is assured, it is realistic to hope that when it does finally happen, a new generation will be ready to realize its potential.
As well as some fairly large scale concerts in Ramallah and Jerusalem, working with the renowned singer Waltraud Meier and the brilliant Jerusalem Symphony oboist Demetrios Karamintzas, we also toured extensively in communities such as Jericho and Bethlehem, where audience development is less about attracting people with an existing interest in music than effecting a wholesale transformation in the attitude of the community, and inspiring focus and concentration in listeners to increase their cultural awareness and quality of life.
This being Palestine, everything is tinged with a wildness that is absurd to a foreign visitor. More than once we were left in complete darkness mid-piece owing to power failure (candles and mobile phones to the rescue!), and the post-concert headcounts of the childrens' choir were legendary 'anyone not here? OK, let's go!'
Palestinian contempt towards the formalities of military checkpoints might seem superficially like the harbouring of a death wish, but closer examination reveals a healthy black humour that is as inspiringly dogged as it is cathartic.
It was heartening too to talk to our Palestinian colleagues (or by now I should probably say friends), and to really reach a deep understanding of their political views. I find that beneath the panoply of conflicting opinions on the political situation – on which every one of us often disagrees – there is a deep rooted focus on freedom and peace that transcends any political arguement. More than once I heard Palestinians give sensible, logical advocations of a one state solution, but when pressed by me as to how they would feel if peace did eventually erupt in the shape of two states (for I believe, as do many, that Israel agreeing to a one-state agreement is about as likely as the celestial teapot being proven to exist!), gave incredibly eloquent answers that rose beyond personal belief. Their attitude: that ultimately peace and freedom are the important goals, and that those people not actively involved in shaping the political process should focus not on the political theories of tomorrow, but on the practical aspirations of today; seeding the creative thought, dialogue and tolerance that will educate the next generation to cope constructively and peacefully in an unknown future.
It's worth repeating again the fundamental idea that it is often impossible to break down oppressive structures (literally or metaphorically!), and that the only way to overcome them is to build something positive from the grassroots that grows so influential that the old order is made obsolete. There comes a moment – a tipping point, Malcolm Gladwell would say – when mass awareness that something needs to give comes into being. And when that tipping point happens, change comes very quickly. History proves this: from the fall of the Berlin wall to the death of the record industry (and subsequent re-emergance of the music industry) and even the phenomenon of Barack Obama's rise to power, it's a reliable pattern for making insurmountable problems dissolve themselves.
I was in the office in Ramallah, articulating these ideas to one of the guest artists, when Ramzi walked in, and caught the end of my explanation. 'Exactly', he said, with his characteristically devious smile, and a glint in his eye.. 'It is exactly what I try to do.' Ramzi 'gets it', and so do so many others in the Palestinian education, culture, business and NGO sectors. I hope with all my heart that the same shift of awareness is happening in Israel too.
It can be argued that the imprisonment and psychological repression of the Palestinian people shares many methodological similarities with the injustices of the iron curtain, apartheid, and racial discrimination of the 20th century. It would not surprise me if it ends in a similar, peaceful way – but it will still take decades to happen. That's the positive scenario. If the current 'two steps forward one step back' approach continues, peace in the Middle East will take another hundred years or more to arrive. But it can happen, and it will happen, however long it takes.
*Yes yes yes, I know it's officially the 'Occupied Territories'. I call it Palestine to make the point, don't write in.
Photos by Kerry Olson. Baroque Festival image copyright Al Kamandjati.

My new commute takes me along Friedrichstrasse, from the south end of the street right the way past Checkpoint Charlie and into the centre of Berlin, following the line of the U-Bahn.
This was one of the lines with 'Ghost Stations ', the mothballed underground stations in Eastern territory where West-Berlin trains didn't stop, but just passed through on their way.
But those stations were never blocked up, or even altered. DDR guards just sat there in turn, rigidly guarding the empty platforms, glowering in the gloaming, as West Berliners glided past in their brightly lit U-Bahn trains. When the stations finally opened up again in 1989, they were like little time capsules; even the 1960s adverts on the Walls hadn't changed.
I finally found time to visit Haus am Checkpoint Charlie , the famous museum that itself played a part in the 28-year drama of this most famous of crossings. I found the pictures of the late 1980s crossing-buildings especially interesting; they resemble more an English Channel ferry terminal check-in than a scarily disputed international border, and that approachability is disconcerting.
Disconcerting, because the everydayness of the architecture attempts to normalize something that is simply unnormalizable by others' standards.
The DDR was speaking to the west, in the language of the west, in order to say something entirely not of the west.
In music, that's called pastiche, and it has its place. But that place is not at the centre of a movement, or a the cusp of change. It's not a forward movement, it's a functional movement. What is function without forward direction? Stasis? I always think it ironic that Stasi Is one letter short of stasis .
What baffles me about the DDR is the state quest to instigate emotional stability…through repression! (and perhaps for some, oppression …). By imposing these 'functional' systems and strategies through social and civic planning, they endeavoured to create a framework of limitation that prevented self-expression and kept the peaceful majority submissive and benign.
But how can you possibly 'impose' emotional stability onto something and think that it will last? All you do by attempting to bottle something up, is increase the pressure on the inside. At some point, the lid will be blown off. So it proved in the American Deep South, and in South Africa, and in Berlin.
And that's why divisive walls always come down… Even if it takes a hundred years.
Talking of which, I'm going back to Palestine later this month…